


the end was soon

by dreamsthebirds



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Everybody Is Dealing With Some Stuff In Spaaaaace, F/F, Found Family In Spaaaaace, Gen, Protracted Discussions About Magic In Spaaaaace
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:28:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 16,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23249248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamsthebirds/pseuds/dreamsthebirds
Summary: So it happened that Thor stepped forward, and embraced his brother, and found he was not so alone as he had feared.
Relationships: Brunnhilde | Valkyrie & Loki (Marvel), Brunnhilde | Valkyrie/Loki (Marvel), Loki & Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 40
Kudos: 128





	1. Chapter 1

So it happened that Thor stepped forward, and embraced his brother, and found he was not so alone as he had feared.

*

"We're completely alone," Loki said, swiping another star chart off his screen with an irritated flick of his hand. He, Thor, Heimdall, and Valkyrie had been poring through the Statesman's navigational databases all morning, only to find they were dated, incomplete, and encoded only the jump sequences for pleasure stations that hadn't been operational in centuries. They were months, at any kind of sustainable speed, from their nearest allies.

Thor had long since suggested all the solutions that came to his mind. Send a signal to said allies? Might as well jump up and down and wave to let deep space raiders know you were vulnerable. Use the remaining fuel reserves to jump toward Earth and shave time off their journey? An excellent way to find oneself totally dead in the water, with a hold full of resentful gladiators who might have voted for different destinations. 

Loki was capable of traveling alone by other means, and had offered to make his way to Vanaheim or any ally of Thor's choosing in order to request assistance. Thor had preferred to avoid such a separation unless absolutely necessary. Based on the knowing look Heimdall had given him, he might not have successfully obscured how terrifying he found the proposition.

So for now they ambled vaguely Earthward. Heimdall spied a supply station some six weeks’ journey away, where they hoped to replenish their food and fuel stores, and perhaps take leave of any passengers who wish to find their own way home.

"Fewer mouths to feed, if they leave," Loki said. Then, considering, "They'd be handy in a fight."

"If they fought on our side," Valkyrie said cynically. At the moment she was tipped back in a seat with her feet on the console, and a bottle of something clear and pungent resting on her chest. "What? It's not like they voted for Thor."

Loki scoffed. "They voted for Korg.”

"And then followed you." Valkyrie grinned, raising her bottle like a toast. "So I suppose you're right. They'll follow just about anyone in a pinch."

Thor smothered a smile at Loki's offended expression, then turned to Hulk, who had followed them onto the bridge and gamely attempted to operate his own console until Loki had herded him away from the delicate instrumentation. "Either way, we need to see where they stand. And we'll need their help in the meantime to keep the ship running. Will you speak to them?"

Hulk brightened at being asked to help. "Hulk talk. Fighters listen."

"Do tell them their cooperation is voluntary," Loki said. "It's so much more pleasant when you tell people that."

"Voluntary," Hulk repeated carefully. "More they cooperate, less we have to make cooperate."

"Careful, Thor." Valkyrie laughed, as Loki gave Hulk an only-slightly-condescending smile of approval. "Or we'll have two kings on board."

*

For her part, Valkyrie enjoyed three days uncovering all the booze hidden throughout the ship, occupied another four cataloging them and hiding them in different places, and finally found herself bored to tears.

Late into the artificial night she prowled darkened halls, telling herself she was doing her duty. Securing what remained of the Asgardian people. Ensuring the refugees of Sakaar had what they needed. She did not admit that she was looking for trouble. She found it anyway.

Loki slouched in Thor’s makeshift throne, wrapped to her figure’s advantage in black leather and green silk, one golden horn and the snapped-off root of second gleaming in the low light. It was a lot of armor, for sitting in a dark empty room. She didn’t look away from the glittering starfield when Valkyrie approached, thought she did accept a drink from the bottle she silently held out. “I’m bored,” she said finally.

“Me, too,” Valkyrie said, tossing the empty bottle behind her and holding out a hand. “Let’s spar.”

*

As the first weeks aboard the Statesman passed and the immediate questions of food and water, sleeping quarters, and task assignments found resolution, a new set of problems arose. 

The first, and most troubling to Thor, was the reaction of the remaining Asgardians to Loki’s presence. He had worried there would be conflict. He had worried the people would resent Loki for usurping the throne, for deceiving them, for leaving them vulnerable, for the final destruction of Asgard itself. 

In fact the people seemed to be reclaiming their prince in a manner he didn’t understand and with which he found himself increasingly uncomfortable. He had not seen Loki interact in any meaningful way with anyone, save Thor and his advisors. Mostly he drifted quietly about his own work at odd hours, yet when he did pass through a crowded room an oddly expectant silence fell. Elders who would continue their work or conversation with nothing but a respectful nod to Thor passing, would stop and give a small bow to Loki if they saw him. 

"Better to be bound by common need than not at all," Heimdall said, after a moment’s consideration, when Thor asked if he should put a stop to the small tokens that had lately begun to appear overnight outside the doors to Loki's quarters. 

"I'm not sure if need is the right -" The chuckle died in Thor's throat at Heimdall's narrow look. "If the people are in need, surely it lies with me -"

"Thor, can you recite the lineage of the least person on this ship to their mother's mother's mother? Can you persuade the stale air to smell of Idunn's fields at harvest?" As had become his habit, Heimdall stood at the conn before the wide viewscreen, relaxed yet alert, like an ancient explorer with one strong hand on the till. Thor was fairly sure a ship this advanced required nothing like that kind of sustained attention, but he kept that to himself. Certainly it was a reassuring image, which perhaps was the point. “When the first Asgardian child is born on this journey, will you bless the birth and weave spells of protection around the nursery?”

Thor was reduced to honesty. "That doesn't sound like Loki."

"How many have said the same," Heimdall said, "and where are they now?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Despite Heimdall's prediction, it was a shock to Thor to find Loki spell-weaving.

Despite Heimdall's prediction, it was a shock to Thor to find Loki spell-weaving. He stood quietly in the doorway of the cavernous cargo bay, watching. It had been ... no, he couldn't remember. Even at the time of Thor's banishment, it had been decades since Loki had welcomed Thor's presence as he performed the delicate works of power and intent.

The magic prickled against his senses, though he could not see the pattern of it. Protection? Privacy? No doubt Loki sensed his presence, but he did not acknowledge him until the last of the web fell from his fingers, shimmered momentarily across the dull gray of the floor, and disappeared. He waited a moment, as if listening, then touched his hands briefly together and stood. "Yes, Thor?"

Thor remembered how Frigga's eyes would shine just a little more brightly in the moments after she wove her own spells. How the air around her would seem just a little warmer. But Loki kept his face turned away. If Loki's eyes were brighter, he could not see it. If the stale cool air that circulated throughout the ship was warm against Loki's skin, Thor was too far away to feel it.

"We're about to dock. Valkyrie says it would be better for me and the remaining Asgardians to stay on the ship, out of sight, as it's to our advantage to suppress news of our situation as long as possible."

"She's right," Loki said, turning at last. "Would you like me to accompany her?"

"If you wouldn't mind? I can't think of a more formidable team." Thor smiled, watching the air around Loki shimmer as he took on an anonymous, forgettable face, with drab clothes to match.

Only later, when Loki and Valkyrie had returned with intelligence, and food, and fuel to keep them going another six months - after Valkyrie had broken off with Heimdall to ensure the safe storage of the supplies and Loki had gone down with Thor to speak with the people and assure them of their immediate prospects - did Thor realize with a start that Loki had never bothered to drop the glamour. Yet not a single Asgardian had failed to recognize him.

*

Valkyrie hadn't minded having Loki along. In fact she liked what sending him said about Thor. He wasn't suspicious of others working together; he wasn't jealous of credit. He did not hesitate to hide himself, when hiding was the best way to keep his people safe. Her bar for good leadership, she acknowledged, was set very fucking low. But he had cleared it.

Loki had not surprised her aboard the station, and she'd liked that, too. No one on Sakaar _stumbled_ their way out of the arena and into the Grandmaster's bed. It took nerves of steel and a truly bloody mind, which, happily, was the same combination needed to negotiate with the traders aboard the only supply station within a hundred light years. Between the two of them, they'd charmed, wheedled, demanded, and threatened their way to a haul far richer than they had any right to expect in trade for the material they had stripped from the Statesman. 

She kept an eye on his magic use. The glamour didn't seem to cost him much, but in the office of a particularly ungenerous fuel merchant the air had gradually gone thick with suggestion. The top note was sweet as wine, _profit_ and _success_ and the wonderful promise of having parted some fools from their money. Then, far beneath, a bass note of pure menace. 

The push-and-pull effect was tremendous, though she could sense the strain of Loki's effort as the negotiation wore on. She doubted he knew how legible his magic was to her. Everything she knew of Odin told her he kept his secrets, and the unique relationship between the Valkyrior and Asgardian magic was a secret worth keeping indeed.

In any event, the merchant was no match for it, and ended up giving them dollars on the penny. They arranged for the fuel transfer and made their way back to the Statesman. And then Loki did surprise her.

Later that night, after what she assumed was a lot of glad-handing and back-patting from the temporarily relieved citizens of Asgard, he came to find her where she sat watching the stars go by and showing her second bottle of the night a good time.

"Looking for a fight?" she asked cheerfully. No better way to end the day, in her opinion. Though things were starting to get a little blurry.

"No, actually - " He cleared his throat and said, stiffly, "I owe you an apology."

She laughed out loud. "Have you ever said those words before, in that order, to a living person?"

"I'm being serious." He lowered himself to sit cross-legged on the floor beside her. "When we first met - "

"You're apologizing for me kicking your ass?" 

"I'm apologizing for the memory I invoked."

The laugh died in her throat. She took another pull from her bottle and looked back at the stars for awhile. He waited. 

"Did you know what it would be?"

He thought before answering. "I didn't know exactly, of course. But I had an idea." 

"So are you apologizing for what happened, or for making me remember it?"

"Both, I suppose. Mostly the latter."

She looked sidelong at him, wondering if he was truly sorry, or just being pragmatic. Honestly, it didn't matter. They were stuck together, and things couldn't be water under the bridge until they'd built the damn bridge. "Apology accepted, Lackey," she said magnanimously, and clapped him on the back.

"Thank you?" He brushed at his shoulder, and she realized she had clapped him with the hand that still held the open bottle. 

She laughed again, hiccuping at the end. "It was a hell of a good move, though. Took me five whole seconds to kick your ass instead of two."

"Thank you," he said again, annoyed and relieved, and sat with her a while longer in peace.

*

So Loki seemed on a path to friendship with many aboard the Statesman. Only Loki and Heimdall remained implacably at odds, as Thor came to realize in the weeks after the supply station. They were invariably civil to one another. Yet to Thor’s knowledge they never interacted outside of his presence, and sometimes between their words and their looks there seemed to be a darkness his intuition could not penetrate.

Thinking that Loki's prior attempts to take the throne lay at the heart of the issue, Thor sought first to assure Heimdall that Loki had no further ambitions in that direction. He found Heimdall remarkably circumspect about Loki's brief rules.

"His first regency was legitimate," he said, looking almost puzzled when Thor brought it up. "I objected to his actions as regent, yes, but not to his assumption of the throne."

"He's a partisan," Loki said, amused, when Thor sought to clarify the issue from Loki’s perspective. "And he’s firmly in your camp, which works to our advantage now. It enraged me at the time, but honestly it was Odin's fault, leading us to think he was an objective observer."

"But his second rule," Thor said, returning to Heimdall, "was obviously a source of outrage to you. Taking and keeping the throne by force as he did."

Heimdall looked at him thoughtfully. "Certainly he took advantage of your father's frailty. He used subterfuge and propaganda to maintain his position while you chose to remain absent.” Was that judgment? Thor thought it might be. “To say he took and kept the throne by force is more than I know."

"I did not try to have him killed," Loki said, astonished, when Thor suggested it as a cause of tension. "Just because I threatened to have him executed for treason? That was politics! Go and ask Heimdall, if he was in mortal terror of his demise by the likes of Skurge."

In response to which Heimdall, when Thor asked him about it, only laughed.

"So you shall be friends?" Thor asked hopefully, going to Loki with the matter one final time.

Loki looked at him for a long while, and started twice as if to speak, before finally sighing, and saying, "What is broken between us will not be mended, Thor. But I’ll serve alongside him peacefully."

"I am happy to serve Asgard at his side," Heimdall said, with a strange and sad look, the last time Thor asked him about it. "Beyond that I do not think what lies between us can be mended." He turned away then from Thor’s questioning look, and did not wish to speak on the matter again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> everybody's working through some stuff aboard the statesman. there's just...so MUCH stuff to work through...


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sparring with Loki was mildly entertaining.

Sparring with Loki was mildly entertaining. Valkyrie put him on his back nine times out of ten, but Bruce and Hulk were working out their violence issues privately, fighting the King of Asgard felt far too complicated, and she’d done enough damage to the Sakaarian refugees. Kicking Loki’s ass was worse than being properly drunk, but better than staring at the walls.

Thor would sometimes stop by, only to watch, or to test some new aspect of his power against Loki’s magic. Eight weeks in, watching them with growing amusement in his eyes, and a half-hidden flicker of something else, he laughed and said, “Loki, stop playing.”

Loki grinned up at her, mouth bloodied and eyes bright, and Valkyrie felt it in every bone of her body. 

After that, sparring was fun.

*

Thor made a point to take the evening meal with his people. Those few Sakaarians who had remained on board instead of disembarking at the supply station had already been welcomed into their midst, and worked and ate and slept alongside the Asgardian refugees. So it was that, most evenings, the only faces missing from the tables would be those few on watch according to the rotating schedule, and Loki. 

Unless Loki was there, and only Thor was blind to him. The idea filled him with embarrassment. But as the days passed and each face became dearly familiar to him, he knew that Loki was only keeping to himself, and he tried to put the problem from his mind. 

One evening an elder, a warrior named Cul, well-known to Thor from his younger days, came and sat at his side. They spoke in a companionable way of many things that had been lost, and many things they hoped would come to pass. After the meal came to an end and people began to drift away, Cul cleared his throat and said, "Your Majesty, in our first days aboard this ship, I noticed you looking hard at some of the faces in this hall."

"My apologies," Thor said, aghast. "I'm sure I was only lost in thought."

"I worry that you harbored some suspicion, which would be my privilege to allay if possible."

Moved by the old warrior's good faith, Thor said, "In truth, the only suspicion I feel is toward my own readiness. I was ignorant of many truths that seem obvious now in hindsight. But my faith in our people is inviolable."

"Your majesty," Cul said, smiling, as some subtle tension went out of him, "I am happy to hear you say so." 

Thor leaned forward and refilled both their mugs. "My friend, let me beg some further honesty from you."

"Of course, your majesty."

"When I returned to Asgard and unmasked Loki, I felt that I was removing a veil that had been drawn across our people's eyes." Thor met Cul's shrewd gaze evenly. "That wasn't quite right, was it?"

"No, your majesty."

"His identity was known."

Cul took a long pull of his drink, considering. "It has been some years since Loki's minor glamours could shield him from our familiar eyes."

Thor shook his head. "So I'm the only one he fools?"

"Since we're truth-telling," Cul said, amused, "the consensus has long been that you must be fooling yourself."

_Fooling myself!_ Thor mouthed, rueful, and got a sympathetic shrug in return. "Another area in which I must learn to see with new eyes." He scrubbed a hand over his beard. "One more question, Cul, and I implore you to speak freely. What of my father the king? Was not his displacement a cause for concern?"

"Odin..." Cul shut his eyes briefly, and sighed. "In his prime Odin was truly a king of kings. Asgard was secure in his wisdom and his strength. But in the latter days of his reign, he was increasingly guided by the worst impulses of his character. I think you were witness to some of this."

"Yes," Thor said quietly. How easy it was, to let grief wash away the sting of his father's sins. He was gone, and Thor would rule differently - was it necessary to remember his cruelty? His arrogance? How much had Thor's sense of his father, at the last, been guided by that one golden moment, when his father had truly listened to him, had seen deeply into his heart, and had released him in love from the weight of an unwanted crown? And now Thor knew that boon had been granted neither by the man nor for the reasons he had supposed. "I can see that Loki's rule might have been a welcome change."

"We could have done without the statue," Cul said, laughing as Thor snorted into his own mug. "We did send to Midgard, to confirm your father rested comfortably. But no, we weren't deceived. I might even say - " He hesitated.

"Please," Thor said, gesturing for him to go on.

"It means something, to those who are ruled, that their king is eager to be loved by them."

"That can be a double-edged sword."

"Indeed, your majesty. But to a people in distress, perhaps it is no little comfort to know that someone so powerful prized their affection so highly."

"Thank you, my friend," Thor said sincerely. "I will take your wisdom to heart."

"You honor me," Cul said, and bowed his head. Then, chuckling again, "And I will say, the songs weren't half-bad."

*

The only rule was: no more memory tricks. At first Loki dazzled her with illusions. Dozens of narrow male faces with glaring eyes filled the cargo bay where they sparred, and the diffuse magic buzzed like static under Valkyrie's skin. The lightest touch dispelled the shades into a shimmer of green light, but working through them took too long; Loki won match after match through brute information overload.

Thor, when she asked for his strategy, turned out to be absolutely useless. Apparently in all their long life together he'd never learned to tell the real Loki from the fakes. There was something in that, but she was absolutely _not_ volunteering to care. Anyway, Thor had options unavailable to the average combatant. A torrent of lightning screaming through an enclosed space overwhelmed Loki's illusions just fine.

For her part, it took Valkyrie less than two weeks to know unerringly which Loki was real, to barrel through the shades in her path and strike without hesitation. The first day she did so, she turned to watch the remaining copies flicker out of sight as Loki glared and coughed beneath her. “Lucky guess,” he ground out, so she laughed and did it four more times.

The next day one of the illusions blocked her charge, ducked her shocked belated blow, and swept her legs out from under her.

“Do not presume to know what we’re capable of,” a second copy purred, straddling her waist and setting a heavy hand on her throat. For a long moment Valkyrie only heard her own thudding heart, and then Thor, who had been watching intently, asked in a low voice, “Could you always do that?”

"No," Loki said, unfolding herself from the shadows in the far corner of the room. "But it seemed terribly useful, and terribly useful things are generally worth learning." 

The illusions winked out, one by one, save the last, which removed its hand from Valkyrie’s throat and stood to face its maker. Loki ran a finger thoughtfully down its chest, then pushed it a little. It swayed, just like a real boy. "This is me," she hummed to herself, "but is it the me I mean to be?" The illusion wavered, smiling, and Loki banished it by shoving her hand into its heart and making a fist.

Valkyrie watched her, and felt a flicker of something half-hidden, and hungry.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "When you said better to be bound by common need, " Thor said to Heimdall, having puzzled over the phrase with increasing concern, "what did you mean? For I don't know that Loki would consent to any binding at all."

"When you said _better to be_ _bound by common need_ ," Thor said to Heimdall, having puzzled over the phrase with increasing concern, "what did you mean? For I don't know that Loki would consent to any binding at all."

"You will have noticed," said Heimdall, in the patient tone which meant he knew damn well Thor will not have noticed, "that mages of real power, having once opened themselves to the great river of magic, must strive always to channel it lest it overwhelm them."

Thor really only knew three mages of real power, and he'd grown up with them around the dinner table. Apart from brief flares of affection, or jealousy, or pride, when one of them exercised a skill he didn't have and couldn't understand, he had not thought at all about how they navigated the rough waters into which fate had cast them. 

Heimdall was watching him closely, and when Thor looked up he found a knowing sympathy in his friend's eyes. 

"I do not say that Loki is in immediate danger of such a fate," Heimdall said. "Only that it is better for a sorcerer of his quality to be encouraged in anything that strengthens the bonds of duty and affection." He thought for a moment, then added: "Strongly encouraged."

Thor went back to his quarters, then, with a new worry to gnaw at his sleep. 

When he woke Loki was curled at his feet, small and sleek and warm. "Are you - " Thor choked on the words as Loki's ears twitched toward him. What was he to say? _Are you to be bound to this hollow place, brother? This shattered kingdom? Am I to bind you?_ "Are you hungry?" 

He rose to make breakfast, feeling Loki's wary feline gaze on his back all the time.

*

After she and Loki had finished their sparring session for the day, Valkyrie would often sprawl out - with a bottle, or not, depending on if she'd remembered to bring one or could get Loki to cough one up from his secret transdimensional stash - and watch Loki work.

Sometimes he'd be weaving spells of sound-proofing or energy-absorption to layer into the structure of the room itself. ( _It's not cheating,_ he said, absolutely outraged _, it's to keep him from blowing up the damn ship_ , but winked at her when Thor's lightning went fizzing into harmless sparkles next time the brothers sparred.) Sometimes he'd be puzzling over a problem one of their people had given him. It was bad dreams, more often than not, and out of thin air he'd spin silken cords of gold for them to fasten around their brows before they went to bed.

"Will that work?" she asked. Not that she was tempted.

"Depends," he said, not looking away from the cord twisting itself slowly into existence between his hands.

She snorted and flipped over onto her belly. "Real helpful." 

One of the copies wandered over and laid down on its belly, too, almost nose to nose with her. This was the real reason Loki labored here, instead of in his own quarters or wherever he liked to lurk while he was avoiding everyone else. He was working out how many copies he could sustain, and how hardy they were, and how little attention he could pay them before they became mere tricks of the light. It helped to have Valkyrie around - watching them, interacting with them, occasionally punching one hard in the face just to see what would happen.

This one was interesting, because it focused on her with some kind of intelligence behind its eyes, and also because it looked like a firstborn child of the royal house of Jotunheim. The lines of heritage scoring its vivid blue skin were unmistakable. "Hmm," she said.

"Hmm," it said back, mirroring her when she raised an eyebrow at it. 

She reached out and flicked its nose, and it disappeared with a silent sneeze. "Loki?"

He wasn't paying attention to her. The cord kept twisting.

"Hmm," she said again, and took her leave.

*

"Wait, wait," Valkyrie said, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes, "Odin stole a baby and took it back to Asgard? And nobody noticed?"

Not for the first time, Thor had the miserable feeling that this was one of those tales that seemed reasonable when Odin told it, then fell apart under scrutiny. Surely Loki's origin must have been - if not universally known - at least suspected by many in the high court of Asgard. Perhaps by many in court of Jotunheim, as well, and in other realms besides. What diplomatic and military machinations had Odin set into motion that day? To how many had Thor and Loki himself been unknowingly subject?

And, regardless, why should Odin have allowed the prejudice against frost giants to have run rampant as it did in the years following the war? Was he ignorant of the talk? Surely not. Blind to its dangers? Did he think it a useful deterrent - that no one would dare to suggest Loki's Jotun ancestry if the implication was, of itself, a monstrous insult? Thor's head began to ache.

"We were raised as brothers," he said, trying to stick to the facts as he knew them. "The truth behind Loki's adoption only came out later."

"How much later," Valkyrie said suspiciously.

"Er," said Thor, and recounted the story, as Valkyrie's jaw slowly sagged.

"What a fucking mess," she said in the end, and Thor could not help but agree. "And Frigga agreed to all of this?"

"I'm not sure - " It was another of a million deeper conversations he wished he had had with his mother. What had she thought, in that moment? How had she felt, living out the consequences of her husband's impetuous act? Thoughtfully, he ventured, "I don't know that she cared to agree, or disagree, once Loki was in her arms."

Valkyrie nodded slowly, as if Thor had confirmed something important. "He was _hers_. You both were. The rest - it didn't really matter to her."

"No," Thor said. "I don't think it did."

"Hmm," Valkyrie said, and seemed like she might speak again to the point.

But then she shook her head, and drew a bottle of something green and sour from under the table, and so they whiled away the evening.

*

Heimdall said that naming a sorcerer helped to anchor them, so for several days following their conversation Thor point to address his brother by name every time he spoke to him. Loki this, Loki that, until Loki began to sneer his own name back at him with equal frequency, and then to ignore him entirely.

"Perhaps leave the naming to me," Heimdall said, after Loki brought a council meeting to an cacophonous end by turning Thor's chair into a giant bird that hopped around the room shrieking _Thor, Thor, Thor_ while Hulk pounded the table and roared with laughter.

The only problem, from Thor's perspective, was that Heimdall knew so many of Loki's names, and that Loki was apt to become strangely irritated when he used them. Honestly, to Thor's ears most of them sounded vaguely plauditory: Silvertongue. Gift-bringer. Just the sort of names a prince of Asgard would earn, over the long centuries. Still, over and over again, Loki bristled.

Sometimes, it was true, that if Loki's thoughts were far away when Heimdall spoke to him, his magic would snap reflexively when his attention was pulled back, knocking a cup off a table, or sending wall hangings aflutter. But surely that could not be a cause for concern? Thor could speak with some authority to Loki losing control, and it didn't look like a tapestry shivering in a light breeze.

One morning some weeks later - over coffee in Thor's quarters, which he took customarily with Loki and Heimdall in order to encourage further friendship between them - Loki went funny and pale, gazing past Heimdall's shoulder at the stars streaming by the window, and not heeding when Thor spoke to him. Heimdall looked directly at him and said, in a voice heavy with purpose, "Hail, Emissary." 

Every light in the room flickered, and Loki jerked back as if he'd been burned. A moment later, he'd fled the room - but Thor had not missed, in that heartbeat when Loki came back to himself, that he had stared at Heimdall with murder in his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me @ my sentences: and YOU get a comma! and YOU get a comma! everybody gets a comma!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor was much in demand any time the power shorted out. Otherwise he was left to fill the majority of his day however he saw fit.

Neither Loki nor Heimdall would speak to what had passed between them in that moment. Thor took it as a sign not to push, and to look with more gratitude on their ongoing civility. Even so, he put an end to the naming. "I'll do what I can," he said firmly, when Heimdall protested, "to encourage the bonds, and so forth. Let that be enough."

He renewed his attention to his people - the only downside was that his people, given the circumstances, were fine. No immediate needs to be met. No conflicts to be resolved. They were bored, yes, but they preferred Loki, for their minor wants, and Valkyrie, for stories of the old days. Thor was much in demand any time the power shorted out. Otherwise he was left to fill the majority of his day however he saw fit.

Valkyrie, though she still didn't want to spar with him, was more than happy to drink with him, and to drive him through workouts that left her with slightly hurried breath, and him sweat-drenched and gasping for air. Soon there wasn't an inch of the ship he hadn't climbed up or crawled through, or a movable object he hadn't lifted.

They would regularly see Bruce - voraciously reading, watching, and listening to everything he could pull from the Statesman's databases - or Hulk, who happily joined their exercises. Loki was rarely to be found unless he wished to be, and, having maintained his long-standing aversion to any physical activity which did not lead to immediate benefit, was actually never to be found when Thor went looking to recruit him.

Still, they would stumble across him in the strangest places. When taking advantage of the heat in the engine room to work up what Valkyrie, in a moment of supreme understatment, called "a good sweat," they disturbed the rest of a distinctive jewel-green snake curled on top of the warmest part of the engine. It hissed at them and disappeared under the machinery. 

Increasingly, though, if they found him at all, they found him in silent communion with the stars. When that happened, no matter how loud they were, he would either ignore them, or only slowly turn his attention to them, as if waking from a sleep. One morning, as they climbed up the longest vertical access corridor in the ship, laden with weight, they came across him sitting cross-legged with his face almost against the narrow emergency window, staring with dreamy eyes, and muttering under his breath.

"Are we going to worry about that," Valkyrie said, frowning.

"Not today," Thor panted, and kept climbing.

*

Bruce and Hulk still weren't sparring, but nothing could have kept Bruce out of the room once he'd heard there was magic to be regularly observed and analyzed. "You've seen plenty of magic," Valkyrie had said, thinking back over the stories he and Thor liked tell about their misadventures on Midgard. "You must have."

"Yeah," he'd said, "but it's all been pointed at me! It's hard to collect good data when the data are trying to kill you." 

That was a fair point, and it was pretty funny to watch him chase down the foxes and magpies that proliferated, meanly, when he would have had a much easier time observing something slower and human-sized. 

Bizarrely, Bruce seemed to be enjoying himself. Having managed to catch one of the magpies, he held it up near his face, turning it this way and that, keeping his hands soft even as it pecked at his fingers. He threw a curious glance at Loki. "Can you feel it, when someone touches the copies?"

"No," Loki said, although she looked thoughtful after she said it, like maybe that was an idea worth exploring. Personally, Valkyrie could think of several useful applications for such a thing, several terrible ones, and at least three that overlapped. 

Bruce put the magpie down. It hopped a few feet away, keeping a beady eye on him. "Can they be anything?"

Loki shrugged. "They can be anything that's me."

"Okay, okay," Bruce muttered, "anything that's you," making a note in his tablet. He turned and looked again at Loki, who raised her eyebrows at him. "And what are you?"

Loki laughed, full-throated. "Maybe you can tell me, once your analysis is complete. I'd love to know."

*

Bruce hadn't wanted to show Thor the visual files. That much was clear. His exploration of the Statesman's databases had been primarily for his own education, but also with an eye for anything useful for getting the Statesman safely to Earth.

"So, I don't really get everything that happened," he had said, fiddling with the controls on his console, "with Asgard, and your dad, and all that history. But it seems like you're trying to do things differently. And I figure that starts with transparency." He pointed Thor towards the relevant folders. "I just don't know enough to know what's useful. But just in case there's names, or places, or whatever, that could help... I just wanted to let you know they were there."

Thor had thanked him solemnly, and waited until he was in the privacy of his own room to begin a review. In truth, there wasn't anything helpful to be found. The videos were centuries old. Thor didn't recognize anyone in them, except for the Grandmaster. 

So it was not any personal association with what he saw that brought Thor so low, which almost made it worse. It was an ocean of anonymous suffering. It was a nameless parade of misery and debasement, set to the music of the Grandmaster's narcissistic patter, spotlit by his cruel and wandering eye. How many souls had been brought to ruin over the millenia, as Asgard and Thor himself wheeled unheeding through their own dramas?

Thor felt the crushing weight of despair within his breast. What was the point of being a king, or of having one at all? To keep one's own home tidy, while filth proliferated outside the door? Why should Loki, or Valkyrie, or Heimdall, or Thor himself, be bound to such a doomed task? Was it purely that the alternative, to abandon their people to the whims of such vicious creatures as the Grandmaster, was worse?

Heart aching, Thor went down to where he knew Loki sat in the makeshift throne staring blindly out in the darkness, and rested his head upon his brother's knee, and wept.

*

He felt Loki coming back to him, by degrees, like a room brightening as the sun rose. Loki's hand, which had been dreamy and slow upon his shoulder, stilled, and then moved, to scratch lightly behind his ear. It tickled. Thor tossed his head, complaining, and Loki laughed. Then, perhaps feeling where Thor's tears had dried, he said, "Crying?"

"No," Thor said, resting his head again, and closing his eyes, "I'm done."

"All right." Loki did not press, but his touch became soothing again. After a little while, he said, "The citizens' council asked for space to start a garden."

Thor didn't know much about gardening, but he thought sunshine was a fairly critical component. "Will that work?"

"It won't be anything like what we're used to, but yes. I think so." Loki yawned and stretched, dislodging Thor as he did so. "It's something to do, anyway."

Thor stood, stretching his own hands high toward the ceiling. Sorrow still swirled in the back of his mind, but he could do something, at least, about the feeling of helplessness. So: a garden. Something living. Something beautiful. Something to care for, at the heart of things. It was a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: getting ready to write some Plot  
> thor: mmm i gotta have some Feelings


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor was thrown from his bed as the Statesman came to an unnaturally abrupt stop.

Thor was thrown from his bed as the Statesman came to an unnaturally abrupt stop. Klaxons began to scream even as he made it to his feet. In the hall, lights flashed red on frightened faces peering from their rooms. "Stay inside," he barked as he ran toward the bridge, already feeling the energy sparking deep within his core, as his armor flickered into existence around him.

Ahead, Valkyrie and Loki, at a dead run in the same direction. At the last turn, some quick word passed between them, and Loki twisted right and out of sight. 

"Raiders," Heimdall said grimly, as Valkyrie and Thor gained the bridge. A three-dimensional image of the Statesman floated above his console. "Here," he said, pointing at a red dot outside the engine room, "and here," indicating another dot on the other side of the ship. It was a common tactic, a second detachment of raiders cutting their way up into an empty bay while the ship's crew focused their defense on the engine, and no less effective for that. 

"They took out the engine already?" Valkyrie said, tying her hair back and retrieving two rifles from the locker on the wall as she spoke.

"Ion cannon," Heimdall said, eyes going briefly unfocused. "No hull damage yet, but they're attaching themselves now to come through."

"Loki's gone to the engine room. Hulk will meet him there." Valkyrie jerked her head at Thor and they raced back through the pulsing lights, past another long gallery of terrified faces, and skidded into the cargo bay where Thor had taken his throne, all those long weeks before, and which was now the dining hall.

The raiders had opted for the viewing window to make their entry. Made out of triple-shielded transparent steel, it was ironically harder to cut through than the hull, but the visibility it afforded the raiders generally outweighed what they lost in speed. Thor could see the outline of the industrial drilling shuttle where the pilot had clamped it against the side of the ship. It blurred in his vision as it powered up, the whine alone so tremendous it made Thor's teeth rattle. 

Valkyrie lifted the rifle to her shoulder and took steady aim. "Should I shoot them now, or wait for them to come through?"

"That's just going to bounce off the window," Thor said, shaking his head. He glanced around and found what he was looking for - a length of steel cable, meant originally for securing cargo, still attached to the wall at the far end. He turned to catch her eye and pointed at it. "Hold on, and be ready."

She stepped back and picked up the end of the rope, looping it twice around her waist, never taking her eyes from the window. Instantly she dropped back into perfect form. "Ready." She grinned, still staring down the would-be invaders. "You gonna have a little fun, your highness?"

"A little," Thor said, and let the lightning ignite in his veins.

*

"I actually liked the dining hall," Valkryie said, complaining and happy all at once, as they ran back toward the engine room. "The tables were nice! It was homey."

The window had shattered outward in spectacular, glittering violence under Thor's fist, and he'd gone with it out into the vacuum of space, cradled in lightning, alight with a proper vengeful fury, that any had dared to attack his people. He supposed those aboard the shuttle had died almost as soon as he reached their hull, electrocuted where they stood, as he took hold of the little ship and sent power screaming through every inch of it. If not, they had certainly died when it exploded under Valkyrie's fire.

He would have gone on directly to the main ship, save that he could not see it where it lurked around the other side of the Statesman. Better to secure the engine room, get a direct view, and attack from there. He stepped back into the bay, and the temporary emergency window shimmered into force behind him. Too late for the furniture, though; everything not secured had been pulled right out into space with him.

Now he and Valkyrie raced back toward the engines, and he grinned in return as they ran. "We'll remake it," he said. "We'll find the homeliest tables in all the nine realms."

"Homey," she laughed, " _homey_ ," and then they were there.

Hulk and Loki, of course, had not failed to secure the engine room. There was a breach in the hull, about as tall as Thor and twice as wide, already covered by the same shimmering emergency force field. Several of the raiders' bodies lay littered across the floor, variously stabbed, crushed, and strangled with prejudice. A proper fury at work here, too, Thor thought, satisfied.

"Well done," he said to Hulk, patting him on the shoulder. He moved on toward Loki, who was peering out of the gap, at the raiders' ship still holding several hundred yards off their position. "I don't know what they're waiting for. There was just one other landing party?"

"Yes," Thor said, "and they're not coming back."

Loki spared him a smile. "Have a nice time?"

Thor grinned back at him. "We're going to need to remake the dining hall."

"Good," Loki said. "It was ugly." He stepped back, still giving his attention to the raiders. "You want to go have a little chat with them, too?"

Thor opened his mouth to answer, and never got the chance.

*

The nice thing about deep space raiders was that, as a rule, they were trying not to destroy the ship. Parting shots from their end were rare. After all, so long as the prize was intact, they could always try again, perhaps with better luck against wounded prey.

These ones, though, were too spiteful, or too impulsive, or perhaps just too stupid to know what a blast of molten energy to an exposed engine the size of the Statesman's would do. The whine of the ugly little ship's plasma cannon powering up was so genuinely shocking that Thor only had time to feel a moment's black despair, knowing that the lightning already leaping from his hands wouldn't do anything to stop an explosion. It wouldn't do anything at all to stop what was about to happen.

Loki was not any faster than he was, but his weapon was better suited to the task.

Ice leapt from the glowing space between Loki's hand to the breach in the hull, and then outward, crashing up against the leading edge of the blast and bringing it to an unnatural halt. A vicious howling wind kicked up instantly and swirled through the engine room as the ice kept moving, so fast and so cold it raced back up the plasma stream, gripped the cannon, and kept going.

It would have been enough. Did Thor say, "Loki?" Did he say, "Brother, that's enough?" He couldn't remember anything afterward but the astonishing fury of the cold, and how beautiful the frost was, spidering swiftly across the hull of the raiders' ship.

Loki took a step forward, not feeling the cold or not heeding it, and the wind screamed, and the ice poured out of his hands, until the little ship was completely enveloped. Nor did he stop, until the distant outline of the hull shuddered, ever so slightly, and Thor knew that winter had crawled inside.

And then he stopped. Between one breath and the next, the glow disappeared and the wind dropped away. The only sound was Loki's ragged breathing. All else was silent. At the end of its frozen tether the ship glittered, motionless, against the deep of space, like a diamond resting on velvet.

Loki took a slow step back, and Thor's only thought was how well the blue of Jotunheim became him. Loki's hands came nervously together, the fingertips of one hand pressed hard into the palm of the other. How familiar it was. His eyes flashed around the room, skittering over Thor's face as if he wasn't sure what he'd see.

Thor hesitated. What to do now? To everyone's relief, Valkyrie knew.

She strode past them to the gap, her boots crunching over the thin rime on the floor, looked for a moment at the scene outside, and said, "Well, that's all right," in a tone of profound satisfaction.

In one perfectly efficient motion she shouldered her rifle, tilted her head to aim, and fired into the dark. Loki turned away, and did not linger to see the ship and all the souls thereon reduced to a shimmering crystal cloud.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Valkyrior, as a class, were empowered with a special relationship to Asgard's magic.

The Valkyrior, as a class, were empowered with a special relationship to Asgard's magic. They had a natural connection to the afterlife which made them prone to powerful and even prophetic dreams. The magic of Asgardian-trained sorcerers was particularly transparent to them. Moreover, they could sometimes wield a specific skill, or spell, made over to them by a sorcerer of sufficient power. 

This, Valkyrie explained to Loki when she successfully collared him on the third day after the attack. He'd been hiding, more successfully than usual, and she had gathered from Thor's guilty-faced theorizing that this was likely due to Odin, that one-eyed shit, having seen fit to allow prejudice - against Jotuns, Terrans, and apparently everyone else in the known universe - flower in the years after Hela's fall. What a marvelous legacy.

Thus, when she'd pulled Loki, complaining, from the empty-looking chair he'd been sitting in, she'd first had to explain why his spells of concealment didn't work on her.

Then, she'd demanded that he start teaching her.

"Why?" he gawked. He looked like his male Asgardian self at the moment, and she wondered briefly if it was coincidence, or if he'd wrapped himself in this form like a security blanket. Damn Odin, anyway.

"Well, I didn't know you could do cool shit," she said. "I thought it was all privacy spells and brainless doubles. If I can learn how to blast ships out of the sky with my bare hands, I want to."

His face couldn't decide if it wanted to be embarrassed or offended. Being a simple sort of fellow, he settled on offended, like she'd known he would. "Fine. We'll start tomorrow morning." He glared in the face of her sunny thumbs-up. "But you're learning doubles first."

*

Thor returned from his watch to find Loki in his quarters, sitting in Thor's chair with his feet propped on Thor's desk, drinking his wine and scrolling through the repair logs on his tablet. He hadn't seen him in almost four days. He took a breath, indulging the great crashing wave of relief that moved through him, then stepped in and let the door slide closed behind him.

"Make yourself comfortable," he said cheerfully, knocking Loki's feet off his desk as he passed.

"I was, thank you," Loki said, swiveling in the chair to watch Thor as he poured himself a drink, then sat on the narrow bed to pull his boots off. "Repairs are going well?"

"Say what you will about the Grandmaster," Thor said, "but the man kept a well-supplied ship."

"And I could say plenty," Loki said, like the punchline to an old and not very funny joke. 

Thor immediately regretted bringing up the Grandmaster, but Loki had already turned his attention back to the tablet. He read on for a few minutes as Thor drank his wine and tried to plot out a conversation where he said nothing at all that he regretted. Perhaps he just shouldn't speak. He could confine himself to nodding or shaking his head.

" _Thor_ ," Loki said. Thor jerked his gaze up, realizing that Loki had said his name at least twice already. "Whatever it is, you're overcomplicating it."

Thor hesitated, then furrowed his brow thoughtfully, and nodded.

Loki's face creased in genuine amusement. He leaned over to place the tablet and his glass both on the desk, then slid his chair over toward Thor, until their knees almost touched. "Do you know what Odin's original sin was, brother?" Loki's voice was low, almost conspiratorial. "The one fundamental flaw from which all the others emanated?"

There was more than one, in Thor's opinion. But if he had to choose: "Control."

"Yes," Loki said. "Control was what he desired above all things. Control not just over his own realm, but over all realms. Control over his children. Over his legacy. Over the truth itself. And that obsessive need to control - it starts small."

Thor narrowed his eyes. "I sense that you're working up to a specific example."

"Oh," Loki said airly, "for instance, it can start with not talking about things. Because soon enough they can't be talked about, at all. They become forbidden, and then dangerous."

Thor looked at him, and Loki looked back at him calmly. His eyes were very green, this close, and so dearly familiar. "I'm desperately afraid," Thor said, "that I will say the wrong thing."

"You might," Loki allowed. "Still it's better than not speaking at all."

"No," Thor said, softly and with certainty. "Not if it makes you leave."

And how easy it was to read Loki, this close, even when he turned his face away to hide what emotions played there. After a moment, Loki said, just as softly, "And I'm afraid of silence once again building a wall between us. Summon your courage, brother, and tell me I can trust you to speak freely."

"You can trust me to speak," Thor said, "if I can trust you to stay."

"Yes," Loki said, breathing out. "Yes, you can trust me to stay." Then he looked down, quirking a smile, to where Thor's hand was locked around his wrist. "So, you can let go of me now."

Thor did, and Loki leaned back, with an expectant look. "You're all right?" Thor asked, after a moment, failing to find any more elegant way to broach the subject. "I know - I mean, I doubt you had planned to - "

"I'm fine," Loki said, not pretending not to know what he was talking about. "Although, I thought you might be startled."

"Not at all. Only grateful."

"Well," Loki shrugged, a picture of indifference, "these last few years have put the small matter of my birth rather in perspective, don't you think?"

"You wrote a whole play about it," Thor scoffed, and Loki's eyebrows rose. "You did tell me to speak freely."

"And I'm gratified," Loki said flatly, "that you should have taken my advice with such alacrity." He leaned back and took up his wine glass again. He looked at Thor darkly over the rim before draining it one long swallow, and then said, "Anyway, the whole play wasn't about that. You only saw the end."

Thor laughed, and stood to refill their glasses. That done, he sat back down, raised his glass, and said, "To honesty."

"To honesty," Loki said, and clinked his own glass against Thor's.

"So, tell me what the whole play was about," Thor said, leaning back comfortably against his pillows, "and then we can talk about the ending."

*

"What does it feel like?" Loki asked the next morning, eyes wide, as Valkyrie concentrated on creating one, two, then three shades of herself.

"Like someone handing you a blazing torch." She frowned and focused harder on the copies, trying to make them move. One of them blinked out of existence immediately. The others wavered, then held, but still only stood and stared. "What does it feel like for you?"

"Like being ablaze," Loki said, and _pushed_.

Valkyrie felt the energy leap through her, then out into the imaginative space between her and the copies. Another disappeared in a shimmer of green light, but the last blinked, looked around, and took a step forward. 

"Holy shit," Valkyrie said, surprised into laughter, and the third copy burst into nothing with her smile on its face.

*

"Angry girl," Hulk said when Thor walked into the sparring room, pointing to the Valkyrie on the left. Then, helpfully, "Mean girl," pointing to the Valkyrie on the right.

The Valkyrie on the right glared and sent a sharp little icicle at him with a twist of her fingers. Hulk only swatted it away with a chuckle, and went back to throwing his enormous ball against the wall, catching it over and over on the rebound. Close to the door, the sound was tremendous, but as Thor moved farther into the room it faded abruptly.

"Sound dampening," Valkyrie said, not looking away from Loki, who was meeting her gaze with equal intensity. "Couldn't hear ourselves think otherwise."

"You can feel what I'm doing?" Loki asked. Valkyrie nodded. "Good," he said. "Now turn it around."

Valkyrie's own features wavered, then settled back into themselves. She gritted her teeth, adjusted her stance, and tried again. This time they wavered, then changed, until one Loki and one Valkyrie stood before him, reversed. They both turned to beam at Thor.

"Oh, no," said Thor, with feeling.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Asgard needs a queen," Valkyrie said.

"Asgard needs a queen," Valkyrie said. She was taking the morning meal in Thor's stateroom, a more and more frequent occurrence. Loki was usually present, and they seemed to expect her in their space, assume her presence at their table, without imposing the pressure of formal invitation. They had simply shifted to make room for her; and perhaps she was shifting, too, to make room for them. "It's time to start thinking about it, anyway."

Loki blinked across the table at her with crimson eyes. She had been Jotun for most of the last week, and playful about it. At the moment she was a scant inch taller than Thor - just enough to make sure Thor noticed - and had the proud curving horns and clarion voice of a frost giant in a female frame of mind.

"I agree," Loki said, at the same moment Thor said, "Why?"

"Because Asgard survived," Valkyrie said. "She's alive, and growing, and so she needs a queen."

"And growing things need a woman's touch?" Thor frowned. "That seems reductive."

"The Queen of Asgard is a title, not a gender identity." Valkyrie tilted her head at him. How could he not know this? "The queen fosters Asgard's growth and protects her heart. The queen is not Asgard's first line of defense, but her last and best. None of that requires the queen to be a woman."

"What is it that you think Mother did?" Loki's voice was cold and sharp. "Gave banquets and wove baby blankets?"

"She did much more than that," Thor said, careful now, "though I do not diminish the blessings of her hospitality or her care for Asgard's children."

"The dream that was Asgard died with Frigga," Loki said. "Or didn't you notice?"

"Loki - "

"I'm not being dramatic," Loki said impatiently. "Think. After she died - was there ever a moment where the realm was whole and strong again? Was there ever a moment of true unity, or lasting peace? Were the people of Asgard ever really safe again, once Frigga had gone out of the world?"

Thor's shoulders slumped under Loki's challenging stare, though Valkyrie felt some sympathy for him. Hard enough to mourn the losses he'd had, the last few years, without having to constantly reevaluate what it was he thought he'd lost. Hard enough to rule, when he'd never been taught how.

"That's a discussion for another time," she said, finishing the last of her coffee, and shaking her head minutely at Loki, who sat back in her chair, frustrated, but let it go. As a sop, she said, "Come on. Let's show him what we're doing with the shared magic."

*

What they were doing, as far as Thor could tell, was equivalent to Loki loading a gun and hurling it haphazardly through interdimensional space in the hopes that Valkyrie would catch it without shooting herself in the face.

"It's not haphazard!" Loki cried, taking offense. "I'm hurling the magic _precisely_ through interdimensional space."

"Yeah!" Valkyrie said. "Besides, I can't generate the ice on my own. How else am I supposed to blast people with it?"

Thor scrubbed a hand over his face. Was it too late to outlaw magic in this new Asgard? Probably. "Okay, show me again."

Loki and Valkyrie scampered into their ready positions, back to back an arm's length away from each other. Loki raised her hands and described a small spiraling pattern in the air; behind her, Valkyrie did the same thing simultaneously in perfect parallel. Then Loki set her feet and generated a burst of ice magic, a blue-white blaze which disappeared immediately from her hands and re-appeared in Valkyrie's, who directed it in a controlled sweep across the wall before her, encasing the chairs they'd set as targets in a shaggy layer of ice.

"This - " Seems like a fucking terrible idea, Thor wanted to say. Should say. But Loki was smiling at him - smiling _down_ at him, Thor thought, distracted, had she given herself another inch? - and he found himself smiling back before the words could actually form. "Could certainly be useful," he finished politely.

" _Yes_ ," Valkyrie said, pumping a fist. "Now let's do fire!"

*

At the next morning's council meeting, the head of the council of elders found it advisable to request, in so many words, if King Thor and Prince Loki wouldn't mind fucking in the botany bay from time to time, separately or together as their tastes dictated and their schedules allowed, that the garden might benefit most directly from the magical emanations of their unions.

"Hulk gets it," Hulk said. Thor, who had been choking on his coffee since _emanations_ , choked all over again. "Fertility god, sexy space wizard. Plants need all the help they can get."

"Sexy space sorcerer, if you please," Loki said. "It's a good idea, Elder Eydis. We thank you for your guidance."

She nodded and left the room, only half-hiding her amusement at Thor's distress. He coughed again, and looked at Loki skeptically. "Does that really help?"

"Of course," Loki said. "Formal fertility rites would be most effective, although, of course, it's hard to know what properly constitutes spring on a space ship."

"I remember the rites," Thor said. Specifically, and with infinitely sharp detail, he remembered Loki as an initiate, in the first year of her majority. 

Over the long years of plenty, Asgard's fertility rites had become nothing but a springtime lark. There would be a field chosen at the edge of the forest; there would be a wooden frame constructed in the center, just large enough for a bed, and draped all around with gauzy curtains that let you see nothing but let you feel as though, at any moment, you might. Initiates would approach in a silent line. Then a pre-selected couple, usually noble, often betrothed, would disappear behind gauzy curtains and ostensibly complete the rites. Thor thought that less half of them did anything more than kiss. Until the night of Loki's initiation, he had never noticed so much as a single extra bud in bloom after the festival was finished.

But Loki... She had not publicly appeared as herself until that very night, and when she stepped into the flickering firelight there had been a half-swallowed laugh from the crowd, as if at the vanity of the prince adorning himself with such a self-indulgently beautiful glamour. 

Only two had known her to be true: Thor, and Freyr of Vanaheim. To this day Thor did not know if there had been some contract between them. He thought not, remembering cool, urbane Freyr looking nothing less than thunderstruck. Freyr had approached Loki slowly, drinking in her proud bearing, the flash of her eyes, the strength in the long lines of her body, the magic shimmering like starlight just under her skin, and had done what any reasonable man would have done when confronted with such a creature. He knelt.

Thor cleared his throat again, shaking away the memory. "But I thought those were just for fun."

"Spoken like someone who ate well through the centuries," Loki scoffed, "never worrying if the crops would fail."

Thor laughed and tilted his head in acknowledgement. He didn't suspect either of them were going to have any _unions_ any time soon, anyway.

*

They do fuck in the botany bay after all, later that day, just to see what happens, Valkyrie rocking breathlessly onto Loki's fingers and tilting her neck for Loki to lay little stinging bites along the skin there. 

"They don't look any bigger," she said afterward, stretching luxuriously, and turning on her side to look at at the tender green shoots just poking out of the soil in their raised beds. She glanced back at Loki. "How long does it take?"

Loki had rolled up to a cross-legged sitting position an arm's length away. Not a cuddler then, which was just fine with Valkyrie - better to let the afterglow breathe in the space between them than crush it in an overeager embrace. At the moment Loki had her arms raised, braiding her hair close against the back of her head. The posture was doing marvelous things for her breasts, in Valkyrie's considered opinion. 

Loki paused and made a thoughtful face. "It's generally not immediate, outside of the formal rites. More of a cumulative effect over time." Then she narrowed her eyes, registering where Valkyrie's attention was. "Are you very concerned about the flowers, Val?" She snickered as Valkyrie rose onto her hands and knees and crawled toward her. "Do you feel an urgent need to make them bloom?"

"Just doing my duty, ma'am," she said, easing Loki down onto her back, and kissing her own laugh into Loki's cool skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> but what REALLY interests me is the agricultural applications of sex magic - me


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eventually, the balance of their little kingdom would shift.

Eventually, the balance of their little kingdom would shift. They would have to reckon with the outside world again; they would make choices, they would make mistakes, that led them inexorably back into battles not yet won.

But first there were days of peace, strung like pearls on the slender strand of their survival.

*

The garden was growing, to Thor’s delight. The process was all very scientific, he was assured as he toured the space, though out of the corner of his eye he could see a few children dumping a huge amount of soil into an empty bed and plunging their hands in it up to their elbows. In the space of a moment they were all covered in grime, and visibly delighted to be so.

“Aeration,” Eydis said solemnly, following his gaze, then mirroring his smile. “I’m not sure how much it helps the soil, but I’m quite sure it helps the children.”

“That’s more important,” he agreed, as he followed her down the next long row. “Tomatoes? They’re growing well.”

“Oh, yes, we’re very pleased with their progress. You’ll pass along our thanks to Prince Loki and Valkyrie, I hope.”

“Why - “ He began, and then stopped.

Eydis looked startled. “Oh - “

“It’s all right.”

“I’m sorry if I spoke out of turn. I assumed - “ She was blushing. “It wasn’t a secret, I didn’t think.”

Just from me, Thor thought, and then caught himself. Assigning personal motives to his brother’s actions was a habit he was trying hard to break. “Please, don’t worry. I’m always the last to know the good gossip.” He cracked his most charming grin. “It’s a terrible failing on my part.”

“I’m sure you’re too busy with your duties to worry about gossip,” she said, relaxing.

“A king should always know what’s going on with their people,” he said hopefully.

Eydis laughed, and dropped her voice into a conspiratorial whisper. “Well, in that case - “

*

"It's almost impossible," Loki demurred at first, when Valkyrie said she wanted to learn to defend herself against the memory spell. "Aren't we all defenseless against memory?"

She let the matter lie, for a time. It wasn’t as though she wasn’t learning - Loki said it took years to truly master even the basic spells they’d been practicing. She had no problem believing that, for the difference between what she could do and he was capable of was the difference between the children tumbling through their daily exercises with Cul and the full might of a Valkyrie at war. 

So perhaps the memory spell gnawed at her precisely because it was yet so far beyond her reach. But the more she learned to read Loki's magic - the more she learned to wield it - the more enchanting the idea of resisting it became. Could you call yourself a master of any weapon, until you had learned to counter it? 

*

Thor watched Loki and Valkyrie narrowly over breakfast the morning after his conversation with Eydis. They seemed no different than he had previously observed - relaxed, friendly, if prone to bickering with varying degrees of heat according to how much they actually cared about the topic at hand. Had he been blind to a blooming relationship? Or was he blind, now, to try reading something profound into a simple matter? He sighed and refocused on the conversation.

At the moment they, along with Heimdall and Bruce, were debating the best next step on their journey. Loki was all in favor of sneaking along as they had been, darting quickly in and out of deep space ports to replenish their fuel and stores, and avoiding recognition at all costs.

Valkyrie and Heimdall argued for a new approach. “We could make a short jump,” Heimdall said to Thor, “and come within a few days’ travel of Vanaheim. There we might find support and resources to speed our journey toward Earth.”

“And if Vanaheim is feeling inhospitable,” Loki argued, “we will have wasted most of our remaining fuel and whatever advantage we had in anonymity.”

“Weren’t you complaining about not having any allies nearby?” Valkyrie asked him. “It makes sense to take advantage of whatever friends we still have.”

“Yes,” Loki admitted, “but that was months ago. We’ve no idea what has changed since then politically. The destruction of Asgard will have had an effect.”

“We’re still here,” Thor said mildly.

“Which will come as unwelcome news to some. Particularly those with ambitions toward a new hierarchy of the Nine Realms.”

Thor made a dismissive sound. “I don’t care about hierarchy.”

“How nice for you,” Loki snapped, his temper starting to fray. “The rest of us must deal in reality, and resurrected kings are not always received warmly by their rivals.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Thor said, sarcastically, “I’m not as familiar with resurrection as you are.”

Loki’s eyes widened, and to Thor’s surprise he saw a flash of genuine hurt there. That, he had not intended. Perhaps Loki was not ready to be teased for his staged deaths, though Thor had come to regard his brother’s theatrics with nothing but a sort of affectionate irritation. 

Heimdall cleared his throat. “Loki is right,” he said, giving Thor a quelling look, “that we cannot be sure of our welcome. I see no great upheaval among the Nine, but undoubtedly there are subtleties that elude my gaze.”

“How likely are we to get reliable news at one of these space stations?” Bruce asked. “Next time we stop for fuel, could we get a better read on the political situation?”

“Maybe,” Loki said. “I think that’s probably our best course of action. If the news is old, or unreliable - “ He looked back at Thor. “Then I’ll go ahead to Vanaheim and assess things, before we commit.”

Thor smiled at him. “Agreed. Thank you, brother.” Then, winningly, to take the accidental sting out of his earlier words, “You know how much I rely on your insight.”

Loki rolled his eyes at Thor’s unsubtle flattery, as everyone else stood and gathered their things. Heimdall and Bruce headed for the bridge. Valkyrie’s presence had been requested at the children’s history lesson, a circumstance which Thor believed held equal potential for glory or disaster. “Good luck,” he said cheerily, and Valkyrie tossed a rude salute at him as she left.

Settling back, he said to Loki, “Besides, you can’t tell me you wouldn’t enjoy a few days on Vanaheim. Fresh air. Fresh food. Fresh faces.”

“Indeed I may stay there,” Loki said tartly, “should the company prove more enjoyable.”

Thor smiled indulgently. “I’m sure Freyr would be delighted to see you.” Then, boldly, “Though, perhaps Valkyrie would be sorry to see you go?”Again, Loki’s eyes went dark, his expression shuttered against some imagined insult. Thor sighed - apparently this was not his morning. “Loki - “

“Let’s not talk about it.” Loki stood and took a step toward the door. “I know you think it’s stupid.“

“I don’t think it’s stupid,” Thor said, aghast. “I think it’s wonderful. You both deserve - “

“Wait,” Loki said, turning back toward him. “What are you talking about?”

Thor blinked at him. “You and Valkyrie. What are you talking about?”

“The magic,” Loki said stiffly. “That’s - the working that I made with Freyr, and Valkyrie - “

Thor cast his mind back to the conversation with Eydis, when she had first made her request. _But I thought those were just for fun_. “Loki, I was only teasing. I don’t doubt - “ 

He clipped his mouth shut against Loki’s renewed glare, for he knew well that Loki was not reacting to an imagined hurt, but a remembered one. Another memory surfaced, one from which Thor had turned away when they last spoke of the rites: the morning after Loki's initiation. 

Loki, emerging at dawn from the gauzy curtains as the last of the revelers drifted away, had laughed in delight to see her work: the profusion of wildflowers, at the far white shimmer of Idunn's orchards in full blossom, at the fields newly gilded with wheat. Freyr - Thor couldn’t remember. He must have been there, just behind her, dazed and happy; or perhaps he’d still been sleeping in the pavilion, wrung into ecstatic exhaustion. 

Thor had only had eyes for Loki, who had laughed even harder, turning to see the jagged marks where Thor's displeasure had been scorched overnight into the rocky hills. "Thor, is this jealousy?" She had looked at him with dancing eyes, her smile wide and happy, only a little good-natured teasing in her tone. "Wish you'd been initiated, too?"

"Of course not," he'd sneered, knowing that his own tone came across not just as scornful, but angry, as though she had embarrassed him. Later, in the agonizing intervals when Loki had been lost to him, that moment would haunt him. The hesitation, the light dimming in her eyes, her smile turning just slightly sour. How could she have known what he meant, when he had choked the words down like coals: _No, I don't wish I had been initiated. I wish -_

"I wish I had knelt," Thor said abruptly. Loki’s eyes widened. “That night, I should have knelt when Freyr did. I should have made everyone kneel."

Color bloomed in Loki’s cheeks. "You don't have to say that."

Thor swallowed. Well, hadn't he promised to speak freely? Loki would just have to suffer his awkward truth-telling. "I was horribly jealous, of course, “ he continued. "Not that it's an excuse - "

"Jealous?" Loki demanded. "Of what?"

"Of you," Thor said, surprised. Loki's honest expression of bafflement sent a new wave of guilt surging through Thor - he'd always thought his own faults so blindingly obvious to Loki, his motives so clearly legible. It was terrible to realize that Loki hadn't seen right through him. "If only you could have seen yourself, Loki. You were blazing like the sun. And all I could be was miserable that I was so easily outshone."

Loki sank back down into his chair, still looking questioningly at Thor. "I thought you were embarrassed."

"Only by myself," Thor said ruefully. "Only because I found myself so dull and ugly in comparison to you, and then so rude and slow in comparison to Freyr. As soon as he knelt, I knew I should have done so first. I wished I had. I just couldn't bear to be second.” Thor shook his head. “I’m ashamed to think of it now. The magic you worked with Freyr flowed through that night like wine. Everyone else drank from it, and was happy. Only I stood apart nursing my wounded pride.”

Loki tilted his head, considering, and Thor hoped the old memory was shining in a new light. “I regret having tarnished something so beautiful,” he continued, and laid his hand over his brother’s. “Your magic is a blessing to Asgard, Loki. I won't fail again to honor it as I should."

"I thank you for saying so," Loki said after a moment, matching Thor's slight turn toward formality. Then, smiling, “And it does help the garden.”

Thor laughed. “I don’t doubt it. The tomatoes are coming along beautifully.” He hesitated. “And beyond that? Are you and Val - “

“We’re enjoying ourselves,” Loki said mildly. “One might go so far as to say we’re indulging ourselves. Beyond that - I really couldn’t say.”

“I’ve no quarrel with indulgence,” Thor said, suddenly worried that Loki would think he disapproved of anyone taking pleasure for its own sake. “I only wish for your - both of your - happiness.”

Happiness, Loki mouthed silently, as if wondering at a foreign concept, but then only said, with a quick sly smile, “I’ll be sure to tell her, for you know how we both hunger for your approval.“

Thor rolled his eyes, releasing Loki’s hand. “All right, all right,”

Loki snickered, heading toward the door. “We never do _anything_ , dear brother, unless we’re sure you’ll approve of it.”

“Go on,” Thor laughed, waving him away, “go make yourself useful. I’m sure there’s some mischief that needs doing.”

*

History class had gone wonderfully, in Valkyrie’s opinion. She hadn’t remembered lessons being so marvelously destructive, but if that was how education was to be conducted in Thor’s New Asgard, she was all for it. 

“At least three of the children showed a real aptitude for combat,” she said, in Bruce’s voice, wearing Bruce's face, as the real Bruce peered at her with great interest.

He and Loki sat across from her at one of the long tables in the otherwise empty dining hall. The tables did look nicer than they had before the raiders attacked, and given the scarcity of materials onboard Valkyrie knew Loki had somehow helped, though he denied it straight-faced.

Having failed, for the moment, to convince Loki to try the memory spell, she was working on glamours instead. So far she could copy any person that she could see, which was less than inspiring, though Bruce seemed as happy to take notes on her failures as on her successes. 

She continued, “We should consider a training program.”

“Of course I’m entirely in favor of child soldiers,” Loki deadpanned, and Bruce’s alarmed gaze jerked to him. Valkyrie smothered a smile, as Loki gave her a dissatisfied look. “Shall we work on emulating people who aren’t literally in the room? That does limit the utility of a glamour.”

Valkyrie screwed up her face. “It’s hard when I don’t know what they feel like.”

Bruce cocked his head. “Physically feel like? Do you have to touch them?”

“No,” she said, “what they _feel_ like.” It was hardly illuminating, she knew, but there was a reason she wasn’t leading magic lessons. “The feeling is like - it’s like a mold of the person, that you pour the magic into. If it’s not clear enough, the energy just - “ She blew a raspberry, and Bruce dutifully made another note.

“Try Thor,” he suggested. “It seems like it would help, if you knew the person well.”

Loki nodded at Valkyrie. “You could try.”

She closed her eyes, trying to conjure Thor. She could see him well enough in her mind’s eye, but that wasn’t enough. She pondered the feeling of Thor, but the problem with feelings is that they were slippery. Was she supposed to focus on how she felt about him? On the general feeling toward him? On what it would feel like to be him? She could feel energy stirring lazily around her, could feel the shadow of her glamour wavering uncertainly, but she couldn’t make it stick.

“You’re trying to do too much,” Loki said. “The sense of the person doesn’t have to be complete. It has to be specific.”

She frowned, keeping her eyes closed. “Specific how? Specific moment? Specific look? What do I - “

“Look at me, brother,” Loki said sharply, and Valkyrie’s eyes flew open as the glamour snapped crisply into shape. She could feel it forming a perfect second skin; even her vision went dark on one side, so that the small natural shifts in her gaze wouldn’t give her away. Already she could feel some substantial quality to the illusion, some persuasive aura of truth, that she had not previously been able to achieve.

“What the hell,” Valkyrie said, in Thor’s voice.

Bruce gawked at her. “That’s - wow. That’s really good.”

Valkyrie lifted her hands, tilting them back and forth. They looked like Thor’s hands. She ran one of them over her head, feeling shorn hair, and the edge of an eye patch. It felt like Thor’s head. “Did you do this?”

“No,” Loki said, looking steadily at her. “You did. Think it through.”

“I was trying to bring up feelings, or memories, thoughts, anything to give me a good clear picture. But it was too much. It was all swirling together.” Loki nodded for her to go on. “When you said brother, I knew - I felt - _exactly_ who you would say that to.”

“That’s good. Remember that glamours, in their most fundamental sense, aren’t for you. They are for the observer,” Loki said. “Think of them as mirrors, reflecting precisely what others expect to see. You’ll more easily find clarity in those expectations than in your own feelings.”

“That explains a lot,” Bruce muttered, and leaned deftly away from Loki’s elbow. “What if you don’t know exactly what the other person expects to see?”

Loki shrugged. “You learn, over time, to pull perceptions from other minds. But honestly it’s a shallow trick. You won’t fool anyone who really knows you, or really knows the person you’re copying, for long.”

“Shallow, my ass,” Valkyrie said. “It’s a great trick. I’m gonna use it all the time.” She pointed majestically at Bruce and intoned, “It is I, King Thor. I anoint you Minister of Science.”

“I kind of think I already was," Bruce said, scratching his head. “Can I be a knight?”

“Absolutely.” She stood and leaned over the table, tapping each shoulder with the side of her hand. “You are now Sir Bruce of Midgard, Minister of Science, Lord of Taking All Those Stupid Notes.” She leaned toward Loki and repeated the motion. “Prince Loki, Minister of Magic, Lord of - “

“Lady, I think,” Loki corrected.

Valkyrie nodded solemnly. “Lady of Being A Fucking Thief, Who Takes All The Good Booze And Hides It In Pocket Dimensions. Which you are going to teach me how to do.”

“Thank you, your majesty,” Loki said, “and no, I’m not, because then all the good booze would be hidden in _your_ pocket dimensions.”

“You’re fired,” Valkyrie said.

“I think only I can fire lords and ladies,” Thor said, from the doorway, where he stood with a deeply amused expression on his face. Valkyrie yelped and felt the glamour shatter. “Was that really what my hair looks like?”

“Yes,” Loki said. “She perfectly captured your current state of disrepair. I’m very proud of her.”

“So am I,” Thor said, smiling warmly but speaking in all apparent seriousness, as he came to sit alongside her. “Your value to Asgard only grows, Valkyrie, and my gratitude along with it.”

She absolutely did not feel a glowing surge of satisfaction at Thor’s words. But Loki gave her a knowing look, and when Thor said, “And I thank you as well, brother, for sharing both your talent and your wisdom,” she happily gave it right back to him.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Tell me what it means to be the Queen of Asgard,” Thor said.

“Tell me what it means to be the Queen of Asgard,” Thor said, early one afteroon after he and Loki had fought themselves to exhaustion. Valkyrie still wouldn’t spar with him alone, though she had taken to lingering when he and Loki faced off, shouting commands to one and then the other, with a perfectly professional disregard for their long-term health or safety.

Today had been one such day. Thor could not deny they were improving under her keen eye, but gods, it was exhausting. At the moment Loki was flat on his back, his breath only starting to slow after ten minutes of inactivity. Thor, conscious of a certain kingly dignity, was sprawled out on his belly, the better to press his scarlet, sweating face against the blessedly cool floor.

Valkryie had been doing one-armed pushups, scornfully, while they recovered, but now she paused. “Are you speaking actual words?”

Which was fair, since he’d been mumbling directly into the floor. He rolled onto his side with a groan. Victory had seemed imminent when he had finally backed Loki into a corner, but Loki had skittered sideways in what looked like desperation, shifting his gaze wildly around and throwing knives haphazardly, so that Thor had not actually noticed the ten-foot thick block of ice forming behind him until, at Valkyrie’s sharp word, Loki had thrust out a blazing hand and blasted him straight through it. He felt every inch of it now on skin bruised from head to heels.

“I want to know what it means to be queen. We never finished our discussion from before, ” he said. “But I’ve been thinking about Mother.”

“All right,” Valkryie said, and rearranged herself to a sitting position on the floor. “To begin at the beginning - your mother, Frigga of Vanaheim, reigned as the Queen of Asgard for almost two thousand years.”

“Yes,” Thor said, moving his head the absolutely minimum distance necessary to look at her, “and I believe that means something more than I thought it did.”

“The Queen of Asgard is not a title given lightly, with good reason,” Loki said, not bothering to move at all but speaking up straight up at the ceiling. “It isn’t granted automatically through marriage, or even through the provision of an heir.”

He still sounded a little winded. Before that last maneuver with the ice, Thor had thrown him down some three or four times with a crackling whip of lightning he’d been practicing. He could see where the leather at Loki’s ankle had burned away on the last strike; the skin was already pink and healing underneath. He reached out reflexively to poke it and Loki kicked at his head. “Pay attention.”

“I am,” Thor said, gingerly raising himself up to sit facing Valkyrie. To her, he said, “You said the queen is Asgard’s last and best defense.”

“That’s right,” Valkyrie said. “They fight not with the honor of the knight or the duty of the soldier, but with the ferocity of the wolf at the mouth of the den. The Queen of Asgard fights for what they love, and fights to the death.”

Thor bowed his head, not ashamed of the tears prickling in his eyes at the thought of his mother’s glorious final moments. How well she had fought, with such grace and power, and without regard for whether anyone else would consider a mortal soul worthy of her sacrifice. Yet - “You say that the queen loves Asgard, and will fight to defend it, but surely that is within the power of any citizen.”

“Certainly,” Valkryie said patiently.

“So how does the queen’s power differ?”

Valkryie tilted her head. “What did your brother say?”

He turned to Loki, who had drawn himself up as well, and was looking at Thor now with a guarded expression. “You said, the dream that was Asgard died with Mother. That Asgard never knew true peace, or safety, since she fell.”

“Yes,” Loki replied, and said nothing further to help him understand.

Thor looked back to Valkryie, who only asked, “Why?”

“Why did he say that?” Thor frowned. “I’m not sure I - “

“I mean,” Valkryie said quietly, “why is he your brother?”

“Because - “ Thor said, and his breath caught on the memory. He remembered a pale face peering out from the embrace of Frigga’s arms as she introduced Thor to his brother. He could almost see her now, the love shining in her eyes, and his own heart leaping to answer her joy. Was it so simple?

Other memories crowded in, and he caught again on something darker. He remembered dragging Loki home in chains, remembered his own disgust and Odin’s fury - and equally he remembered his mother glowing with happiness, humming sweetly to herself as she bustled about gathering books for the bloody-minded sorcerer whose cell could constrict his own powers but not those of his mother. Not those of the Queen of Asgard.

Why - oh, he would have laughed if it wasn’t so bitter - why was Loki his true brother, and Hela his sister in name only? Odin would have consigned his second son to the same fate as his first daughter, save that Frigga simply had not allowed it. And why, if the queen was to die for Asgard, had his mother died for Jane? Clearly the final determination of who was worthy of Asgard’s love and protection belonged to the queen, and not to her complicated and compromised husband.

He was struck by a vision: a shining circle of gold, encompassing those within in light and warmth and community. “It’s not that the queen loves Asgard,” he said, wondering, “but that Asgard _is_ what the queen loves.”

Valkyrie nodded at him with solemn, shining eyes. “Now, how and why it all works,” she said, smiling, “the proper flow of magic between the King of Asgard and the Queen of Asgard and the people and so forth - that always went above my head. Loki could explain it. But yes, that’s the heart of it.”

He looked back to Loki, his heart full, but Loki only offered a smile that did not begin to reach his eyes. “So you see,” he said calmly, “it really would have been better - “

But the rest of Loki’s thought was lost, as the doors slid open behind him and Cul appeared at the head of a score of young Asgardians who had volunteered to form a new defensive corps. “Ah,” the old warrior said, eyes lighting happily on Valkyrie, “you’re here. Care to put these cubs through their paces?”

“Absolutely,” Valkyrie said, hopping to her feet and rubbing her hands together in glee. “Where were we? As I recall, I was kicking ass, and your asses were getting kicked.” She cuffed at the heads of those closest to her, quarter-speed, and they ducked away laughing.

Thor rose as well, and smiled, welcoming the group and thanking them for their efforts, and when he turned to look for Loki, he only glimpsed his brother’s back as he slipped quietly away.

*

He knew that Loki would delay being found if Thor looked for him, so Thor occupied himself entirely with other tasks. He met with Heimdall, planning adjustments their course as they approached the next station. He checked in with the engineering team, and the healers. He stopped by the children’s lessons, and discovered they were preparing a play, and immediately promised his help - an offer received with muted thanks - and Loki’s - an offer received with great enthusiasm. Apparently the entire success of the production rested on certain props and lights being enchanted just so.

It was late into the evening when he finally emerged from the last of his meetings, and found Loki perched above the opposite doorway, radiating discontent. _You were looking for me_ , Loki said.

“I dare you to prove it,” Thor said comfortably. He held out an arm, and Loki hopped onto it with a quick flutter of his wings. “I’ve got dozens of witnesses to how much I wasn’t looking for you at all.”

_I know_ , Loki said, walking up Thor’s arm in little hopping steps. Thor waited until Loki was settled on his shoulder before he began walking. _How incredibly annoying._

“Finish your thought from earlier,” Thor said, nodding at a passing citizen who nodded back at him, and separately at Loki, without blinking an eye.

Loki paused a moment before replying. _I don’t want to fight_.

“Will it be a fight?” Thor mused. “I suppose it will be, if you meant to say that it would have been better had Mother never loved you.”

Loki’s feathers ruffled against his ear. _It’s not that I’m not grateful -_

“Loki,” Thor said, wanting to grab Loki and shake him into some kind of sense, and knowing that’s precisely why Loki hadn’t given him the option. “You don’t need to be grateful to your own family for loving you. That’s not how it works.”

_Not for you, I suppose_ , Loki said.

“Never mind,” Thor said through gritted teeth, as he triggered the door of his quarters and went inside. “I am going to fight you, just as you are.”

Loki made an amused sound, stepping off Thor’s shoulder and touching the ground with human feet. She kept the bold patches of white, though, in the dark hair waving over her shoulders. “Maybe next time we spar,” she said, moving to the bar and pouring herself a drink. “I’m sure Valkyrie would be delighted.”

“I’m being serious.”

“So am I,” Loki said, turning and leaning back against the bar as she looked at him. “I won’t say I’m not glad, to have had Frigga as a mother. Of course I am. But you must think seriously about these things as the King of Asgard, and not as Odin’s son, or Frigga’s son, or my brother, if you wish to protect your fledgling kingdom.”

“And you must know,” Thor said, coming up to her, close enough that she had to tilt her head up to keep meeting his eyes, “that the only Asgard worth protecting is the one Mother loved, and that I love. An Asgard that does, and will always, include you.”

“That’s a lovely sentiment,” Loki said, “and one you absolutely cannot afford.”

Thor smiled reassuringly down at her. “Let me worry about that.”

“What a preposterous thing to say,” Loki sputtered, and since she was already annoyed he felt free to steal her drink and step away, laughing at her rising temper. “Let you worry about - ! Until a few hours ago you didn’t even know what the queen _did_!”

Thor settled into a chair, sipping from his glass. “Luckily I have you and Val to guide me.” He scratched his head. “Oh, before I forget, in the morning you’re helping the children enchant the set for their new play.”

She stared at him in outrage for a long beat, and then spun around to make herself another drink, the better to stop and wave various bottles at him as she ranted, and Thor was perfectly happy to let her.

*

They kept working, they kept sparring, they kept stealing moments of uncomplicated pleasure. And it did feel like stealing, Valkyrie could admit to herself, though not in a truly guilty sense. More like a child sneaking sweets from a feast-laden table - an indulgence not quite forbidden, but not quite assured. And all the sweeter, perhaps, for that.

She tried not to think about it too much.

Instead, as the days passed and they drifted closer to their next port, her thoughts turned increasingly to the memory spell, and how useful it would be for the warriors of Asgard to know how to defend against such an attack. So it may have been that their mistake was inevitable, for it was rooted in good intentions, which are fertile ground for mistakes.

"I've been surviving that memory for millenia," she said. It was past midnight, some weeks after she’d first broached the topic, and she was sprawled comfortably in her own bed with a bottle for company. Loki had come to meet her after her shift on watch, had accompanied her back to her room, but in a strange mood - he kissed her sweetly but absently, and did not come to her bed but drifted to her window instead.

She had been slipping in and out of sleep, pleasantly buzzed, but he was still curled there, watching the stars slack-faced, with his fingers twisting strangely in his lap from time to time, as if he were tying knots.

At her words he finally blinked and turned his attention to her. Void-walker, Heimdall had called him once, before Thor had seen the bloody writing on the wall and put a stop to the names. She thought of it now as he came to her bed with the dead light of stars spilling from his skin.

“Believe it or not,” Loki said softly, as he laid down facing her, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I see it anyway, every night when I close my eyes," she said. He studied her intently and she could see herself, the seriousness of her expression, reflected in his still-dilated pupils. “I already know I can survive it. I want to learn how to fight it."

"Ask me again tomorrow,” he said, finally, before closing his own eyes to sleep.

She didn’t know what the next day would bring, but tonight she followed him into dreams, content.

**Author's Note:**

> well if there was ever a time to Just Start Posting Stuff it's now! let's go chapter by chapter and see what happens :)


End file.
